I was also enthralled by The Book of Form and Emptiness from the very first chapter, and I know just what you mean, about seeing all of your things differently. For days after I started that book, I felt like everything in my house was looking back at me when I looked at it!
Also, that’s the loveliest story about an ugly sofa that I’ve ever read :)
I have many things with stories to tell. My first stuffed animal, now 78 years old. My coffee mug, the third one from the same maker (Cindy Jenkins), I call the mugs sisters because they are all ceramic women's heads, complete with earrings. I broke the first two, have two left. Things I've carted around over the decades... But of course, I've discarded far more, and they have stories too.
I looked up at my bookcase and saw the outline of a book wrapped in plastic: "La Unica."
It took me back to when I was teaching in Mexico City, and I had the audacity to enter into a dark cavernous building across from the statue of Cuauhtemoc on Avenida Reforma that housed a few dozen individuals including Lupe Marin, the second wife of Diego Rivera.
Lupe answered the door and invited me and my student translator into her apartment and regaled us with stories about Diego Rivera as we sat inches from a few originals painted by iconic artist.
Lupe was gracious, flamboyant, and a hoot. She brought out a copy of her book, "La Unica," signed it and presented it to me as a gift.
I was to conduct the second part of my interview when she returned from a European trip, but as sad luck would have it, she became ill and passed shortly after her return from the trip.
I will always be reminded that this crazy gringo conducted the last interview with Lupe Marin, and every time I place eyes on that book, it all comes to pass as if it was yesterday.
I have promised the book to someone who will treasure this keep sake, but I'm not giving it up right now.
I'm reminded of the title, The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd that captivated me twenty years ago -
My towering shelves are filled with hundreds of books and mementos, especially cards I've received from friends and family. These things surround me with love
The Book of Form and Emptiness was a classic example of how writing a story about the obvious can be seen as innovative - a bit like those folk who get a doctorate for stating the obvious. A book I thoroughly enjoyed, as I did your sofa story.
By coincidence I am sitting on a sofa with my Susan, my wife, with a story to tell, already old when we bought it in a secondhand furniture store in 2006, close to our home in Nottingham. Earlier today, I started reading your post and stopped when you asked me to look at what I could see around me. The story I can tell goes back thirty years to my 50th birthday in May 1994. Tomorrow, I will do a Note and link it to you Betsy. One of the reasons most of us end up with so much ‘stuff’ is because we can no more be parted from the memories which surround us than we can those we love. What great writers do is indulge in the ordinary, to write about characters who could be us.🐰
A black Steinway upright piano my father played from a time before I was born (1944) until 1962, when he died young, at 48. His favorite piece was Bach''s Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring. I no longer have the piano but whenever I hear that piece, the piano, and, through it, my dad, speak to me.
Th arrival of this edition of Spark and a workshop I'm constructing—Writing About Things—coincided yesterday. I like when that happens. As for my own things, I have way too many, but one I treasure is my Underwood. Thanks to gifts from friends I have replicas and images and coffee cups emblazoned with typewriters. Oh so many typewriters. My Underwood, the 34.2 pound original belonged to my late husband. He wrote many many things on it in the years before his first computer, including a love letter to me.
I had a yellow stuffed dog Peaches that I got for my tenth (?) birthday, the year my brother was in the hospital for a month. My mom left the hospital for a tiny window of time to take me to Toys R Us to pick it out. She said it would comfort me when she was away and I held on to that thing FOREVER. I finally let it go two years ago when my (now) husband moved in and we needed the space. That silly dog represented one of the hardest times of my life but also my ability to get through it.
I was also enthralled by The Book of Form and Emptiness from the very first chapter, and I know just what you mean, about seeing all of your things differently. For days after I started that book, I felt like everything in my house was looking back at me when I looked at it!
Also, that’s the loveliest story about an ugly sofa that I’ve ever read :)
I have many things with stories to tell. My first stuffed animal, now 78 years old. My coffee mug, the third one from the same maker (Cindy Jenkins), I call the mugs sisters because they are all ceramic women's heads, complete with earrings. I broke the first two, have two left. Things I've carted around over the decades... But of course, I've discarded far more, and they have stories too.
My life seems to be an endless struggle to purge things from my life. That's the definition of a traveling life, I guess.
I looked up at my bookcase and saw the outline of a book wrapped in plastic: "La Unica."
It took me back to when I was teaching in Mexico City, and I had the audacity to enter into a dark cavernous building across from the statue of Cuauhtemoc on Avenida Reforma that housed a few dozen individuals including Lupe Marin, the second wife of Diego Rivera.
Lupe answered the door and invited me and my student translator into her apartment and regaled us with stories about Diego Rivera as we sat inches from a few originals painted by iconic artist.
Lupe was gracious, flamboyant, and a hoot. She brought out a copy of her book, "La Unica," signed it and presented it to me as a gift.
I was to conduct the second part of my interview when she returned from a European trip, but as sad luck would have it, she became ill and passed shortly after her return from the trip.
I will always be reminded that this crazy gringo conducted the last interview with Lupe Marin, and every time I place eyes on that book, it all comes to pass as if it was yesterday.
I have promised the book to someone who will treasure this keep sake, but I'm not giving it up right now.
I'm reminded of the title, The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd that captivated me twenty years ago -
My towering shelves are filled with hundreds of books and mementos, especially cards I've received from friends and family. These things surround me with love
The Book of Form and Emptiness was a classic example of how writing a story about the obvious can be seen as innovative - a bit like those folk who get a doctorate for stating the obvious. A book I thoroughly enjoyed, as I did your sofa story.
By coincidence I am sitting on a sofa with my Susan, my wife, with a story to tell, already old when we bought it in a secondhand furniture store in 2006, close to our home in Nottingham. Earlier today, I started reading your post and stopped when you asked me to look at what I could see around me. The story I can tell goes back thirty years to my 50th birthday in May 1994. Tomorrow, I will do a Note and link it to you Betsy. One of the reasons most of us end up with so much ‘stuff’ is because we can no more be parted from the memories which surround us than we can those we love. What great writers do is indulge in the ordinary, to write about characters who could be us.🐰
A black Steinway upright piano my father played from a time before I was born (1944) until 1962, when he died young, at 48. His favorite piece was Bach''s Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring. I no longer have the piano but whenever I hear that piece, the piano, and, through it, my dad, speak to me.
Th arrival of this edition of Spark and a workshop I'm constructing—Writing About Things—coincided yesterday. I like when that happens. As for my own things, I have way too many, but one I treasure is my Underwood. Thanks to gifts from friends I have replicas and images and coffee cups emblazoned with typewriters. Oh so many typewriters. My Underwood, the 34.2 pound original belonged to my late husband. He wrote many many things on it in the years before his first computer, including a love letter to me.
I had a yellow stuffed dog Peaches that I got for my tenth (?) birthday, the year my brother was in the hospital for a month. My mom left the hospital for a tiny window of time to take me to Toys R Us to pick it out. She said it would comfort me when she was away and I held on to that thing FOREVER. I finally let it go two years ago when my (now) husband moved in and we needed the space. That silly dog represented one of the hardest times of my life but also my ability to get through it.